The latest advisory issued by government’s Cyber Coordination Centre or CyCord is for private individuals, and officials pointed out that the NIC (National Informatics Centre) platform is being used for most government video conferences.
Mumbai: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday issued an public advisory stating that the video conferencing app – Zoom, is “not safe” for the use of private persons. The MHA also stated that it had already barred the government officials from using the app, Zoom.
The application has gained huge popularity and is currently among India’s three most downloaded, having a download of about 100 million plus in past two weeks.
In the last week, the government had warned the Indian Armed Forces personnel, having the world’s second largest strength were asked immediately to refrain from usage of Zoom.
During the lockdown period many government as well as private people while in work from home are using video conferencing app, Zoom. Several thousands of professionals working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic are on ZOOM.
The MHA advisory has come after the red alert flagged by national cyber security agency – Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-in) which the cyber vulnerability of the popular app.
The Cyber Coordination Centre (CyCord), under the MHA has issued an advisory on secure use of ZOOM Meeting Platform by private individuals. This advisory states that the platform is not for use by Government officers/officials for official purposes.
The document makes reference to earlier advisories of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) and states that Zoom is not a safe platform. The guidelines have been issued to safeguard private individuals who would still like to use the platform for private purposes.
The government has advised people to prevent any unauthorized entry into a Zoom Conference Room and prevent the unauthorized participant to carry out malicious attacks on the terminals of other users in the conference.
Meanwhile the founder and CEO Eric Yuan of Zoom in his statement admitting calls routing through China, flags alert to many private and Government on using ZOOM. – By Santoshee Gulabkali Mishra
